


The Time Travellers' Lunch

by thetransgirlwhoneverwas



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22920811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas
Summary: The Doctor and Charley stop off in 21st Century England and have lunch at McDonalds. Soul-searching ensues.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	The Time Travellers' Lunch

“...Doctor?”

“Yes Charley?”

“...what exactly is this?”

“It’s a Big Mac, remember?”

“...okay Doctor, but what is...one of those?”

“It’s a burger,” the Doctor replied. “It’s ground meat and other ingredients between two slices of bread, meant to be eaten quickly or on-the-go, but it became popular enough that many restaurants started serving them as sit-down meals. Staple of 21st century fast and easy food.”

“So this is the future?” Charley asked, dubiously examining her Big Mac.

“You could have gone for the chicken nuggets like me,” the Doctor replied.

“I only ordered this because you said it was the signature dish…” Charley complained. “What are those, anyway?” she asked, but the Doctor was too busy eating one of his nuggets to answer her. She shrugged and ate one of the fried potato pieces that she was rather enjoying.

The Doctor sighed quietly. “I’m sorry, Charley. I understand this is very different from what you’re used to, the upbringing you had and the TARDIS food machine are both much more...sophisticated than this.”

“It’s okay, Doctor,” Charley responded. “The point of my travelling with you was to broaden my horizons and experience new things! I could never experience this if I’d just gone to Singapore.”

“Even if you never want to experience it again?”

“Even if I wouldn’t necessarily choose to experience it again, yes.”

“Don’t worry,” the Doctor said. “We’re only here as a brief stop-off while the TARDIS interior stops being quite so lethally radioactive and she finds somewhere to keep all those slugs.”

“Where are we, anyway? When are we, anyway?”

“England, Coventry, 2019, and about...3AM? Yes, about 3AM.”

Charley almost choked on the chicken nugget she had swiped from the Doctor’s side of the table when he wasn’t paying attention. “3AM?!”

“Didn’t you notice it was dark outside?” the Doctor asked. “We made an emergency landing, it may be lunchtime for us but time doesn’t revolve around us.”

“No, I meant,” Charley lowered her horrified voice to an indignant whisper. “There are still people working here? At 3 in the morning?”

“Oh yes, many fast food chains like this are open 24 hours a day, they practically never close.”

“They make people work 24 hours a day?” Charley asked, horror not subsiding. “How do they expect people to keep going?”

“It’s not the same people all the time, they work in shifts Charley,” the Doctor reassured her.

“Oh,” Charley replied, slightly reassured but still uncertain.

“They do still make them work very long hours with few breaks and barely any pay, though, although that isn’t confined to fast food restaurants,” the Doctor added. “Generally they keep them on low enough pay that they can’t afford to be more independent, forcing them to rely on jobs that treat them horribly because they don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“It’s barbaric!” Charley exclaimed, though still whispering, not wanting to cause a stir.

“A little like the servants in your household?” the Doctor asked, looking for a chicken nugget he had dropped behind his takeaway box, but clearly watching her reaction.

“That’s different!” Charley insisted. “We gave them a place to live, and a fair wage, and food, and a good life, and...and I’m really no better, am I?” She looked incredibly dejected at her realisation.

“That may have been harsh of me Charley, it was hardly your fault, and standards change significantly in 100 years,” the Doctor reassured her again. “But part of broadening your horizons is confronting certain less...savoury views and attitudes and coming out a better person for it. Rassilon knows I’ve done that plenty of times. I hope.”

“But…” Charley started, but trailed off. The Doctor motioned for her to continue as he tried to fish a particularly troublesome chip from the bottom of the container with his other hand. “I just thought that I was...okay with who I was, as a person. But the more I travel with you, the less sure I am that I...like the person I was before.”

“That’s good, Charley!” the Doctor smiled at her, surprising her somewhat. “I’m horrendously embarrassed of the person I was even a year or two ago! I never want to be satisfied with who I am as a person!”

“But, don’t you want to be as good as you can be?” Charley questioned.

“Of course I do,” the alien dressed as a Victorian gentleman while sitting in a McDonalds at 3AM replied. “Nobody is perfect, and nobody could ever be perfect, but that’s no excuse to not want to improve yourself constantly. In fact, that’s exactly the reason why one should try to improve themselves constantly. What’s the point of living if you’re not going to live as your best self, whoever that best self is at the moment?”

Charley considered this for some time while eating the Big Mac she didn’t expect to enjoy as much as she did.

“So, if we were to improve ourselves by fighting this system that keeps people enslaved?”

“Oh, it doesn’t last forever Charley,” the Doctor explained. “It lasts a while, but people start getting tired of it, demanding more rights, working together. There was eventually a revolution that ended with the whole system being dismantled and regular workers actually getting a say in their own lives. It happened after a particularly nasty incident on a mining station called…Chasm Forge, I think?”

Charley raised an eyebrow. “And I suppose you had something to do with that?”

“No.”

Charley raised her other eyebrow.

“Genuinely, I didn’t.”

Charley had run out of eyebrows to raise, so she settled for raising the eyebrows she had already raised even higher.

“…at least, not yet-“

“A-ha!” Charley grinned in triumph.

“I may, at some time in my future, but I don’t know if…” the Doctor started to explain, but gave up after Charley steadfastly refused to give up grinning at him. “But the point is, we can’t interfere now. It could ruin history. In any event, the TARDIS should be habitable again by now. Shall we move on? Or should we get some ice cream first?”

“Oh, yes, let’s get some ice cream!” Charley agreed.

The Doctor smiled, and asked at the counter if they could add some ice cream to their order.

“Sorry,” the server replied, clearly completely apathetic and not sorry at all, but in her circumstances Charley didn’t blame her. “Ice cream machine’s broke.”

“Not to worry, I can sort it,” the Doctor exclaimed, and before Charley or the server could say anything he had vaulted the counter and was buzzing away at the machine with his sonic screwdriver.

“Doctor…”

“Don’t worry Charley, I can fix it, it’s quite simple.”

“Doctor, please be caref-“

Charley didn’t get to finish her warning, as she was interrupted by a very loud and worrying _CLUNK_ from the ice cream machine. Before Charley had the opportunity to even tell the Doctor that she had told him so, a jet of half-frozen cream erupted from the machine and hit their server directly between the eyes, swiftly followed by another that narrowly missed Charley’s mouth, and another that hit a wall, and another that hit the floor, and another that started to stain the Doctor’s shirt, and after that one Charley stopped counting.

“Ah,” the Doctor said, and Charley sighed dramatically. He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the machine once again. The screwdriver made a louder, more high-pitched sound for a second, and the ice cream cannon, sparked a little, made a quieter and less worrying _CLUNK_ than before, and finally stopped launching ice cream across the restaurant.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Charley tried diplomatically, although the server’s thunderous face told her it wasn’t going to be very successful. Once again, she did not blame her.

“Yes, erm, really sorry,” the Doctor started moving sheepishly in the direction of the door, once again vaulting over the counter. He and Charley started to walk out - “I’m so sorry!” Charley called again - but before they left Charley saw the Doctor surreptitiously use his sonic screwdriver on the payment machine beneath one of the ordering screens and hold a card up to it for a fraction of a second before walking out of the door.

As they walked back to the TARDIS a few streets away Charley turned to him.

“So what did you do to that machine with your sonic, Doctor?”

“Ah, you noticed that,” the Doctor replied. “I changed the parameters of the payment software for a few seconds so I could leave a tip. A way to, um, make up for the mess we made.”

“The mess you made, you mean,” she chuckled to herself. “So, how much did you leave?”

“Well, given that the alterations I made were a little imprecise, and there were four servers there, so I didn’t have enough time to calculate a number that divided precisely into four-”

“Doctor,” Charley coaxed.

“Somewhere in the realm of about £29,341.69 each.”

Charley smiled to herself again.

“Something to help them find something more...fulfilling,” the Doctor continued. “I ought to find some use for all my money, after all.”

“Why do you have so much money?” Charley asked as they entered the TARDIS, the familiar hum of the console calling her home. It didn’t feel any different to how it always felt. The radiation was clearly all gone.

“Didn’t I tell you? I worked for UNIT for a rather long time,” he explained. “Under the Brigadier.”

“Oh, that lovely man who helped us in Malebolgia!”

“The very same,” the Doctor smiled. “They gave me quite the salary, though I rarely had any use for it.”

“So why can you never pay for anything anywhere else?” Charley inquired, a cheeky smirk appearing on her.

“Oh, because I always forget to take money with me.”

“But you didn’t this time because...?”

The Doctor didn’t answer, he simply winked at her from across the console. Charley didn’t need to push the question. She sat in her favourite chair in the console room, and wondered where they would go for dinner.


End file.
